Spectrum.com review: online payment is a rip-off! 105

What does "kick your net" and "capping your net" and "wires hanging off your house" mean? Does anyone else understand this slang?

PayXPress is just a scam. Time Warner is so hard up for customers and cash that they are doing anything to find a way to squeeze extra money out of their remaining customers.

If you didn't follow what happened the real Time Warner (TW) spun Time Warner Cable (TWC) off as a separate company. In the process they made TWC buy all their stock from TW. That cost about 16 billion dollars. TWC had 8 billion in liquid assets so TW sucked all that up. But, TWC did not have the other 8 billion so TW "loaned" them the money. So TWC went from having a nice cash reserve to having a huge debt and no operating capitol. Yeah, TWC is not longer part of TW. They just got to keep the name.

To make things worse, from their point of view, the cable companies have lost something like 5 million customers over the last couple of years. Most of the loss has been in the last 6 months of so.

Back to PayXpress... I had an "ebill" set up through my bank so that I actually received a copy of my TW bill through the bank. I could just log into my bank account and pay all my ebills. It was great. Then, TW went to this PayXpress scam. They refuse to send you the actual bill by email. They will send you a notice of where to find the bill, but not the actual bill. So, I just ignored them and used my bank web site to send them payment. Then they told me they would not accept payment through my bank web site...

They told me if I wanted to pay on line I had to do it through PayXpress. I told them that if they wanted to get paid they were going to have to accept payment through my bank web site. They refused. After a couple of months they threatened to cancel my service for non-payment. I pointed out that I had paid them, but that they refused to accept it. They said they didn't have to accept it that way. I said that was right they didn't have to accept it. But they also could not claim I hadn't paid them. I told them that they could either accept it the way I wanted to pay it or lose a customer. They eventually got the message and started accepting my payments. They also dropped the "late" fees.

A few months later I dropped them and switched to AT&T. AT&T was so bad... The service never worked. It didn't do what they said it would do. It sucked. It also took 11 months to get all the moeny they owed me. AT&T charged me for the service for 3 months after I canceled it. Then they kept charging me for the phone lines and Internet for a couple of more months. Then they actually apologized told me they owed me money that I had been trying to get from them for 5 months. Then, 6 months later they sent me a check. One messed up company. But, of course, AT&T has been out of business for years now. Yep, they got bought up by SBC, the former Southwestern Bell Corporation, who fired almost all their management, most of the rest of the staff, and just kept the name, the long distance infrastructure, and some of their R&D.

I switched back to TW in a week. As a "win back" I got more services than I had before at a cost less than I had been paying before. I'm only paying about 66% of the list price and I got that locked in for 2 years. When that two years ends I'm going back to AT&T. They've now had two years to get the bugs out. And, if their service still doesn't work, then I'll let TWC win me back one more time :-)

I have to say that over the last two years the TWC customer service has gone from insanely bad to the best I've ever seen from a telecom company. Seriously, I was on the phone with them today and the phone was answered quickly, the problem was handled and corrected in just a few minutes, and the representative noticed a weird problem with my bill and I was handed off to a specialist who identified the problem and fixed it. Total time on the phone less than 20 minutes.

It is just amazing what actually needing customers and facing real competition can do to a company. :-)

Anyway, TWC customer service is getting better all the time. OTOH, they are doing everything they can to make their Internet service useless. They understand that once you have high speed Internet you do not need cable TV or telephone. TW figured that out a long time ago, why else spin off, and rape, a major part of your business? Because you know that their business model can not survive.

BTW, I'm in Round Rock, Texas. Just north of Austin. I was one of the first Roadrunner customers and I've switched my Internet service back and forth between the phone company and TW for the last 15 years.

Ol'Bob

I am having a heck of a time trying to get into PayExpress. Time Warner also said they would be converting to something called MyServices. It is now 10:20 EST 5-23-10 and I have been trying many ways to findout where MyServices is located for about an hour now. Pay Express has been impossible for me to log into for two months now. I have only found MyServices once. I am not a computer savy person so why can't it be simple for folks like me.

customer service !

i use to work for TW. They are a crappy company. Between service men not showing up for house calls to employees arguing with customers is horrible. they do have the ability to credit you for the time that you were without service for phone and cable. Tell them you are going to disha nd they can give you even better rates. Good Luck

vandalism. satellite wires cut by twc installer.

vandalism. my satellite wires cut by installer for twc.

I totaly agree with you. The worse part is when you sign a contract to lock yourself into a special rate as soon as the contract ends the rates double. Then they charge you a outlandish fee if you cancel the contract. They don't care about anything but making money. Oh and they are the worlds worse for cutting your phone lines when they install cable. They do this so it makes it harder for you to get with another phone or internet company. I had to wait a few weeks to have all the lines repaired but I went with another internet company that is a lot cheaper than they are. I will never go back with their services again.

http://post.complaints.com/confirm.php

email: lobbyx@hotmail.com for more details and/or status.

Time Warner Cable / PayExpress

Should you have problems with TWC try mailing OR emailing
their head honchos if you don't get results at the local
yocale level. Happy Trails!

Also, read about what else is happening when a utility
becomes too big and needs to be disassembled into a
million pieces to ensure corporate monopolies are not
allowed to abuse patrons.

PERIOD. TAKE NO PRISONERS WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR RIGHTS.
AND PASS IT ON. PIO. PIO. PIO

Time Warner Inc.
One Time Warner Center
New York, NY [protected]
United States - Map
Phone: [protected]
Fax: [protected]
Web Site: http://www.timewarner.com

Citigroup, Inc.
399 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10043
United States - Map
Phone: [protected]
Fax: [protected]
Web Site: http://www.citigroup.com

Cabela's Inc.
One Cabela Drive
Sidney, NE 69160
United States - Map
Phone: [protected]
Fax: [protected]
Web Site: http://www.cabelas.com

Sun Microsystems Inc.
4150 Network Circle
Santa Clara, CA [protected]
United States - Map
Phone: [protected]
Fax: [protected]
Web Site: http://www.sun.com

Citadel Broadcasting Corporation
7201 West Lake Mead Boulevard
City Center West Suite 400
Las Vegas, NV 89128
United States - Map
Phone: [protected]
Fax: [protected]
Web Site: http://www.citadelbroadcasting.com

Dell Inc.
One Dell Way
Round Rock, TX 78682
United States - Map
Phone: [protected]
Fax: [protected]
Web Site: http://www.dell.com

Mr. Jeff Bewkes, 56
Chairman and Chief Exec. Officer $ 9.35M $ 1.74M
Mr. John Martin Jr.,
Chief Financial Officer and Exec. VP $ 3.15M N/A
Mr. Paul T. Cappuccio, 47
Exec. VP and Gen. Counsel N/A N/A
Ms. Patricia Fili-Krushel, 55
Exec. VP of Admin. $ 2.60M N/A
Mr. Robert K. Shaye, 69
Co-Chairman of New Line Cinema and Co-Chief Exec. Officer
of New Line Cinema

COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
[Language/Communication Barriers/Blunders]

Time Warner Inc., a global communications leader in media
and entertainment with businesses in television networks,
filmed entertainment, publishing and interactive services,
uses its industry-leading operating scale and brands to
create, package and deliver high-quality content worldwide
through multiple distribution platforms has failed at its
most elemental level in spite of a recent Sept 16th
webcast and participation in Goldman Sachs�¢ï¿½ï¿½
Communacopia Conference in New York.

The FCC may be surprised by a firestorm of criticism drawn
recently by darling Timewarner Cable when news leaks out
that not only double billing issues but unprofessonal
employee misconduct in discriminatory practices against
spanish-speaking paying clients detriments TWC
communication industry credibility.

In spite of fifty-two percent of Hispanic population
online activity, representing 23 million users, surpassing
the two year old figure estimates predicting Hispanic web
population would not exceed 20 million until 2020, TWC has
tapped the sleeping dragon with discriminatory practices.
Shame on Timewarner Cable and its subsidiaries. Today the
growth of US Hispanic Population on the internet
has accelerated exponentially per Mediaweek published
reports.

Still, TWC has been reported as not only double billing
spanish-speaking clients, but adding insult to injury when
spanish-speaking clients arrive to be called by number and
are mistreated as second-class clients when forced to wait
longer as no spanish-speaking representatives are
available to accomodate them. Disgruntled schedule-
conscious bilingual clients in need of returning to work,
taking kids to school/daycare or attend classes are
wonderng when TWC wll get their act straight. TWC is in
seriously deep doo from a range of discriminatory
practices to sever business blunders. Just how is TWC
expected to grow in this economy when its rank and file
are in such disarray (and to the dismay of stockholders).
A never ending slippery slope. However, there is hope. The
FCC works with TWC alongside Latin based forums and
educational organizations towards improved billing
practices, upgrading against anti-discriminatory practices
and
general TWC representative sensititivity training and
interpersonal communications upgrades especially in
nationwide Hispanic regions. TWC is expectd to
deliver by year's end in the form of scholarships,
improved service, etc. etc..

090909 [T] 8:37 AM Went by Timewarner Cable to pay phone
bill previously spoke with Diane via phone on Friday re:
inaccurate amount accoridng to regular biling cycle.

Looked like double billed account for client. Told Diane,
client advised he had not received bill until double
billed amount on 08/31/09. Would clear business on [T] DUE
TO LABOR DAY WEEKEND.

At TWC Office on Tuesday, picked ticket. While waiting for
turn, observed TWC representative's
discriminatory practices in setting aside two spanish-
speaking clients on two seperate occassions.

According to their questions, these two spanish-speaking
clients had the same double billing issues.

However, their turn and time were usurped by TW reps lack
in communication skills providing them service only
because they were spanish-
speaking and the TWC rep was not so they were moved to the
side. TWC failed to accomodate this protected class of
spanish-speaking clients and were informed that a
representative would not be available until hours later.

Essentially, TWC representatives failed to provide TWC
finest home phone service and instead provided
unprofessional misconduct that not only failed to fulfill
TWC standards of excellence in home phone service, but
instigated an inconvenient, time-wasting introduction to
an uglier side of TWC discriminatory practices and
uprofessionalism that left one sensing one was not in good
hands with TWC. When a simple business transaction
escalated to the point of a client being maligned and
harassed by other lobby client bystanders who had no
business interfering with initial client's private
transaction and TWC representative allowed this verbal
assault on initial client to continue without correcting
perpetrators led to a mob mentality escalation against
someone standing up for their turn in a private business
transaction.

Secondly, TWC representative was not in compliance with
Privacy Acts protecting a client's information and had
issues with maintaining client's privacy while
collecting client's personally identifiable information.
The representative failed to properly respect client's
confidentiality regarding private informaton. And even
after addressing the importance of confidentiality, TWC
representative failed to exhibit care. To secure client's
privacy, client representative clarified informaton sought
was on the TWC information sheet previously presented to
representative. Requested representative not voice
confidential information out as the data could be heard by
lobby bystanders. [Incidentally in prior bill pay
experiences, TWC representatives were informed of a person
sitting in a lobby with a laptop computer who was writing
down social security numbers and phone numbers that were
voiced out by the TWC representative for each client that
came through the lobby doors.] TWC security was lax. TWC
was irresponsible in security breach, was not securing
that private information was not easily accessible by
strangers or non-TWC employees in an age of identity theft
you would expect a communications giant could at least
manage this. While explaining double billing issue to
representative, representative asked for the "mailing"
address of client. Told representative it was on the
form, again, and pointed to form and reminded
representative not to voice out information. The
representative asked for "physical" address. Told
representative both mailing and physical addresses were
the same and were on the form. Representative said they
weren't. Repeated for the third time the information
requested was on the form. The TWC representative was
most likely referring to the "billing" address. Which
possibly had just been upgraded on the computer on Friday
when double billing issue was discovered via phone
conversation with TWC. When clarifying if representative
meant "billing" address and not "Mailing" or "Physical"
address which was what representative had asked for, then
why hadn't representative asked for "billing" address
information as this caused confusion.

TWC representative failed to acknowledge error and denied
asking for mailing/physical address information. I
mentioned to TWC representative that alongside failure to
graciously accept constructive criticism, representative's
lack of empathy and negative and unimpressive attitude
[which stunk] was not helping clients and was detrimental
to TWC customer representative service relations [not to
mention the discriminatory practices observed two clients
before with the spanish-speaking clients who were put
aside without merit.]

At this juncture, another lobby bystander spoke out of
turn and interfered with this client's transaction and
time to address issue with customer service
representatve's unprofessonalism and disregard and
disrespect for TWC clients' privacy. After telling
instigating bystander to mind his own business and wait
his turn, two other bystanders chimed in that they had to
go to work. Wouldn't have that problem with time
management if the representative had simply admitted
representative's error and we would have been able to move
foward without further incident. Instead the problem
escalated. Timewarner Cable Representatives' lack of
interpersonal skills further allowed a situation to
escalate, allowed aggressive bystanders to speak out of
turn and allowed harassing bystanders to retaliate against
client for bringing representative's unprofessional
misconduct, TWC's double billing issues and discriminatory
practices to light. The verbal assault on this TWC client
could have been avoided had TWC representative been able
to take constructive criticism over a simple error easily
remedied with affirmative interpersonal communication
skills. Heck, if mega-communications magnate/founder Ted
Turner can embrace constructive criticism without issue,
surely a TWC representative has the grace to do as well
without provocation, harassment, retaliation or incident.

Thank you in advance for ensuring future spanish-speaking
clients are safe from verbal/physical assaults while on
TWC premises and thank you for ensuring TWC employees are
exposed to sensitivity training and interpersonal
communications training, while upgrading the lobby area to
ensure the utmost client privacy is practiced. Finally,
thank you for ensuring anti-discriminatory policies and
practices at TWC locations are upgraded before donations
of personal computer equipment, software and TWC internet
services are evenly distributed amongst the following
educational organizations as a token of your efforts
towards a better future with TWC.

thank you for your complaint. i completely agree with you. to many people are getting hooked by not reading into the fine print on these "good deals"

I have used check free successfully to pay my TW and other bills for years, TW, is forcing me to use their pay express and no longer accepts Check Free. For the last several months before informing me they no longer will be using check free, they would loose the payment and give me the run around, meanwhile charging late fee's etc. They suck for sure.

You MUST deal with TimeWarner in writing. Do NOT rely on phone calls or email.
You MUST deal with TimeWarner in writing.
You MUST deal with TimeWarner in WRITING.

If TimeWarner were a person it would best be described as a pathological liar: They will say one thing and do whatever is most convenient for them.

I have made a hobby out of rescuing people from TimeWarner. They screwed me out of $1000 so I plan to cost them orders of magnitude more in customer loss.

Send ALL letters to "the office of the president" for your territory.

If you continue to be defrauded by TWC file a FORMAL complaint with the "Public Utilities Commission"

...

remember you CAN also sue them in small claims court. In most jurisdictions the filing fee is about $60. WHEN you win your case you will recoup this investment.

I agree Time Wiener is horrible but in San Diego they have a monopoly in certain regions. If you live in one part of town you can only subscribe to Time Warner (or Wiener as I prefer to call them). If you live in another part of town you can only subscribe to Cox. I just purchased a house in the Wiener Only Area and, their service is so terrible I may like to move when the economy picks-up just to get away from them. So far it took them two months to provide us service when we moved in. Then it took another few months to actually get the services we were paying for. Now, they keep wanting to increase our bill for no apparent reason. Also, they are forcing us to use the pay express and now I have no idea if the payment went through or not or when the bill is due. (Due to a glitch in their system I am not able to see my own account.) I told them of the numerous errors with their web site (which it seem you wouldn't have if you were an internet provider) and they act like I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to use a computer. I'd like to say for the record I am an Engineer with a Professional Engineering license and I know when your software program is F#@ked! Each time I call to complain it takes an average of 5-6 hours on hold. No wonder they are being sued by the City of LA for messing-up the City phone system!

I have been paying my Time Warner Cable Bill online through automatic paymennt since September. In March of this year, I cancelled my automatic payment and Time Warner Cable put the payment through anyways and caused my checking account to incur NSF fee's and now they don't want to make good on their mistake and pay for my NSF fee's. I am in the process of emailing them back and forth & continueing telling them of this problem but they continue to say it wasn't their fault. Well guess what, it was. So until I get some satisfaction, I will be fighting for a long time. I am not going down w/o a serious fight. They will pay me $62.00 for those fee's. Since the supervisor's don't want to help me, I will be going to head of the company. Somebody is going to give me my money back!

COMCAST CABLE COMPLAINT

I have lived in Cotati Ca. for 8 years and Comcast On Demand Cable has always droped a signal there is always something on the screen that urges you to call them. Then you have to stay on the line while it the automated system asks you if you would like to upgrade your phone, computer service? Why would we up grade service when On Demand does not work? This week we will be discontinuing service I feel I have been more than patient with Comcast and I am thankful they do not run National Security.
Perhaps GOOGLE should buy out Comcast Cable at five cents on the dollar so someone can correct the long over due problem?

JOE ROSSI

Roadrunner charged my $20 for some porn movie i never rented! i called and asked them what was going on and they said that someone must have rented the porno since they say that nobody can rent and charge to your account, i guess i have casper the ghost in my home renting pornos

We have Time Warner and have had some problems (Southern California) and are thinking of switching to Verizon Fios - still debating. There are lots more complaints on here for Fios, so I'm not sure. I called to cancel once and the CSR offered $30 off a month for 6 months! So if you change, give it a try!

I worked for cable TV back when it was cool and there's no way to credit for one channel out of literally hundreds. I would get this complaint from time to time (I was a Marketing Manager) and you need to look at the bill as just a flat monthly charge, like some other utilities. On the other hand, the squeaky wheel gets the grease (to coin a phrase :). Did you finally get a credit? Hope it all worked out for you!

I am extremely disappointed and frustrated in the (lack of) service I am receiving from Time Warner Cable Kansas City. I signed up online for a business package of phone and internet. Sadly, and surprising in this digital age, they ask me for all my personal and business information yet can't complete my transaction online! I must wait for a customer service rep to call me to complete the transaction. That never happened so I had to call them myself! What awful customer service, they clearly don't want my business. When I get on the phone with a business sales rep, he tells me he doesn't have access to my online application and makes me give everything to him again. He emails me the paperwork hours later at which time I realize he spelled the company name wrong. How this happened I don't know as I spelled it for him. He just decided to put an extra space in the name. So I ask him to correct the paperwork, which he does, although when he sends it back there are pages missing. I figure he decided he didn't need those so I sign the paperwork and send it back. 24 hour later and I haven't heard anything from him, I call him twice, leave one voicemail and finally reach him on my third try. He says that there is paperwork missing so he can't complete my order. So he resends the paperwork again, with the missing pages and the missing pages are still misspelling my company name. Really bad considering it is for the Caller ID listing. How embarrassing would that be for my business! It has been three days and I am no closer to having my business phone or internet service. Which by the way I am paying more for than my home service for the exact same products. What a rip-off! I should have gone with DSL. Time Warner Cable needs to learn how to respect their customers.

I'm in Niagara Falls, NY with Time Warner. My Fox Business HD channel has been breaking up for months, just the sound, the picture is ok. TimeWarners customer service is NON EXISTENT.

i spent an hour on the phone yesterday with these clowns...and now i've been on hold for more than half an hour, already. and this time i had a name and an extension.

The same thing has happened to me. I'm having trouble logging in to Pay Express as we speak and I was charged with $25 in fees a few months back because there was "insufficient funds" in my account. Uh, the bank has no idea of this and they didn't charge me anything on their end, which they would have, and I had plenty, and I mean plenty of money in the bank at the time. I sincerely wish I could get some other kind of dsl here where I live in Studio City, CA but TW Roadrunner is the fastest and has a nasty monopoly on the place. I went in to dispute the charge (they told me I had to drive to a location to deal with it in person!) and the lady who helped me was not very nice, to her I was just another annoying customer even though I am like you guys; always trying my very best to be polite and compassionate. And like I said, now I can't log into Pay Express and TW hasn't been sending me any notices telling me to pay my bill either by email or online. TW sucks!

I just now canceled my Time Warner Digital Cable+HBO after a heated argument with customer service over late fees. I have been using the Road runner and Cable for more than a year here in Columbus, Ohio. My monthly utilities include cell phone, land line, electricity and cable. I use my chase bank account's pay bill facility to pay all these bills at the beginning of the month. The land line and electricity bills arrive in my email every month, so it is easy to just type in the amount through the chase pay bill for these items. For cell phone, I log into the account and pull out the amount and pay it through chase. Time warner has this stupid pay express which will not allow you to log into it for weeks. So I missed paying for one month since the amount varies by little every month and also due to some deals we pay the regular amount after the deal period. Next month also the pay express has the same logging issues. So then onwards I started paying $178.14 (2x$89.07) for the missed month and the old regular amount of $89.07 monthly even though I didn't know what the exact amount was. But they started accumulating the late fees and it reached $15 by the time I noticed the new bill through pay express. So I called and explained to them that I have been regular in paying my all other utility bill and that this happened because of the pay express logging issues. But they agreed to waive only one month's late fee of $5. I did not want to pay $10 extra for no mistake of mine.

Payexpress is just a TWC run-around. I wish there was some way to talk to a person with knowledge.

Get this - I have been paying my TWC electronically from my bank and it goes out each month automatically. So this February (2007) it went out as normal but Time Warner says they didn't get it. So I get the next month bill with the missed payment plus a late fee so I phoned.

They started out by saying no problem we will enter a payment search and find what happened to it. Then I get this not-so-nice letter claiming that I screwed up some how and needed to pay this bill again. Excuse me, but I didn't change anything.

So I called the numbers that were on the letterhead and all of them had been disconnected. Okay so who made changes? So I dialed the toll free service just to wait on hold to talk to a totally useless first line customer service person. Not trying to put any one down but there job is simply to get information they have absolutely no authority to correct any problem unless it involves collecting money. So after my third CS person I demanded a supervisor and after 3 days I finally got a call back.

Then I was accused of ignoring a second letter that requested the actual bank statement proving that I paid the bill. The letter never came! I have no intentions of giving out that type of information but did copy and paste the needed information to help TWC to find their mistake. They wouldn't accept my document and demanded the actual statement. So I said no problem send me yours then I'll send you mine. The phone got quiet but they light finally came on.

So they took the information I sent and I received a letter at the end of May finally stating the found the problem and have corrected it. Yeah, but the story don't end there.

I get my June bill and it claims I didn't pay my May bill which of course I did just like February. However, when I called to tell them what happened again the CS personnel said my cable would be shut off on Friday unless I make a payment. I said I did make the payment and he stated I would have to send in a bank statement. Oh My God didn't I just go through this.